Top Realtor tips and tools for marketing:

Agent’s website – Having a website is not an optional anymore for Realtors. It is required as most of the prospect clients now can be found online.

Optimization – Not properly optimized Realtor website will be useless and won’t help you. You can’t stop there, once you established your site you must so an SEO job together with some other useful tools that can bring you into the top of the Search Engine rankings. If your knowledge is not enough to do the work, there are individual companies that can put their expertise to help you make the job.
Using blogs – To make your Realtor website rank faster, having a blog is a great help of making it on the top. Your blog success depends upon its content, it should be with interesting, informative and consistent post.

Seminars – Hold local seminars Present seminars about home buying, selling and investing tips in your local community. This will provides you with great marketing advantage by making yourself an expert in this area.

Add virtual tour on your Realtor website – To make their website popular and attractive many brokers and agents are using virtual tour. This is a great marketing tool and proven to be effective in dragging more visitors, driving sales and attracting more vendors to their door.

Imagine this in the not so distant future.  Your Client pulls in front of your listing and holds up their smart phone with a camera.  Through a special app they see links to your info, pictures, videos, comps and whatever other marketing thing we can load in.   This will happen and we will be there and ready to supply the sites that will work with this.

“Video games have been entertaining us for nearly 30 years, ever since Pong was introduced to arcades in the early 1970s. Computer graphics have become much more sophisticated since then, and game graphics are pushing the barriers of photorealism. Now, researchers and engineers are pulling graphics out of your television screen or computer display and integrating them into real-world environments. This new technology, called augmented reality, blurs the line between what’s real and what’s computer-generated by enhancing what we see, hear, feel and smell.

On the spectrum between virtual reality, which creates immersive, computer-generated environments, and the real world, augmented reality is closer to the real world. Augmented reality adds graphics, sounds, haptic feedback and smell to the natural world as it exists. Both video games and cell phones are driving the development of augmented reality. Everyone from tourists, to soldiers, to someone looking for the closest subway stop can now benefit from the ability to place computer-generated graphics in their field of vision.
Up Next

* How 3-D Graphics Work
* How Invisibility Cloaks Work
* Curiosity Project: What is the connection between optical illusions and reality?

Augmented reality is changing the way we view the world — or at least the way its users see the world. Picture yourself walking or driving down the street. With augmented-reality displays, which will eventually look much like a normal pair of glasses, informative graphics will appear in your field of view, and audio will coincide with whatever you see. These enhancements will be refreshed continually to reflect the movements of your head. Similar devices and applications already exist, particularly on smartphones like the iPhone.”

Read the Full Article Here on Howstuffworks.com

I like giving you great tips to pass on to your database, and this week I have another great one. Please don’t just use this tip for yourself, because it’s a great tip, but the real tip is to pass this on to your database by email, postcard, or a friendly phone call.

This is a great money saving tip, it’s one that virtually everyone can use. I don’t know about you, but I find myself calling 411 at least once per day, usually on my cell phone when the phone book is not available, and at a $1.50+ per call, that’s at least $45 per month, $540 per year or over $8,000 for the last 15 years. Well, I found a free service that does the exact same thing!

They ask you the city and the state and then the name of the company or person you are looking up. And that’s all there is to it. I know, I know, you are asking the same thing I did, nothing in life is free, what’s the catch? Well, the only catch is when you call you have to listen to a short 5second ad like, “Drink Dr Pepper or Wal-Mart, your saving store”; and that’s it!

I love great ideas, especially free one’s! I hope you find this quick tip helpful. So stop what you’re doing right now and pass this info on to your client database. They will love you for it and think of you each time they call the free 411 line.

Companies like Wal-Mart pay big money to have their customers think about them, now you can get that same thing for free.

Story Selling

Let’s face it, we all love stories. What’s more, stories can be used effectively to help sell your listings. So, have you considered telling the “story” of the home, instead of the property address, square feet and number of bedrooms?

Let’s assume that you’ve just listed a home in a subdivision that has 3 others that are similar in price. You have to do some digging, but find out what’s different with your listing (versus the others) and write the story. The headline must be written in such a way that people want to read more.. But first some tips:

Headlines or copy in all capital letters are hard to read
Use short sentences and bullet points
Start with the negative
Pictures should reinforce the story
Write for a specific audience
Here’s an example of a story-selling ad where there is no family room, but a big back yard!

——————————————————————————–

Big Back Yard To Die For!

Do you need a family room? Or would you rather have one of the largest back yards in the neighborhood? In addition to 3 bedrooms & 2 baths, your family will love the outside living space, with:

Concrete Patio for dining & barbequing
Space to play with your children
Both shady and sunny areas to enjoy
Invite the neighbors. There’s enough room for entertaining your family and friends. Oh, and don’t forget the house – was just painted & has new appliances!

——————————————————————————–
Longer copy, especially in the form of a story, sells. Take out a ¼ page ad. Include the story in the listing description (MLS). Post the story of your listing on Facebook. Send it out in an email with the subject line: Do You Know Anyone Who Wants a Big Back Yard?

Well, you get the idea. Your challenge is to find the story of the home. Marketing your listings is part story-telling, so tell the story well!

Each week, as work winds down, make an appointment with yourself to assess how you’ve been doing. David Allen, the best-selling author of Getting Things Done, calls this a weekly review, which he believes is critical to achieving the results you desire.

The weekly review is more than a chance to step away from the distractions of the office, it’s also a time to catch anything that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks. Schedule an uninterrupted block of time every week, and use it to evaluate and process your activities.

Allen suggests that you begin by collecting everything that belongs in your inbox. Gather all loose papers, scribbled notes, and audio memos that you haven’t been able to transcribe. Empty your mind by writing down all the things that you haven’t dealt with yet. Hot synch your personal digital assistant so that any notes or appointments you recently added now appear on both your PDA and desktop computer.

The next step is to process your inbox. If an item doesn’t require action, trash it, file it as reference material, or add it to your someday – maybe list. If an item does require action, go ahead and complete it if it takes two minutes or less. If it requires more than 2 minutes, then delegate it or defer it and create reminders so that it won’t be occupying your thoughts.

Review your deferred and someday-maybe action lists. Mark off all completed tasks. Integrate selected actions into your plans for the coming week. Schedule any next steps, such as meetings, in your calendar as needed.

Check over your waiting for lists. Are your delegated tasks getting done? Do you need to send out follow-up reminders?

Go through your projects. Remember, any tasks that require more than one step qualify as projects. Assess their progress. Do you need to rethink the stages involved? Determine what the next actions are.

Review last week’s calendar. Examine the notes. Are there any follow-up activities that you’ve neglected? Sort these steps the same way, deciding on the next concrete action. Look over the upcoming week’s calendar. What do you have to prepare?

Now that you’ve regained control of your working environment, take a little time to be creative and bold. Shift from the micro to the macro. Brainstorm. Capture as many off-beat ideas as you can. When the ideas stop flowing, get up, stretch, and look at those wild musings. Are they worthwhile? Take them back to your inbox and determine if they are actionable or not… Don’t forget to schedule your next weekly review!

Now, I’ve been to hundreds of closings and this was the first time I had ever seen this done, but I really liked it. I bet this 30 second speech has saved her many headaches. Here’s what she did.

Right before the last documents were signed, in a very pleasant voice, she looked at the buyers and said, “Hey guys, listen. We all know that things break. You are getting ready to buy a home that has many parts to it. The seller and I do not know of anything that is broke or that is getting ready to break that you haven’t already been made aware of. So if something breaks, whether it’s next year, next week, or even tomorrow, you understand that it was just the day that that item decided to break, and not something that was kept hidden from you. Since it’s now your house, it’s now your item that broke, so this is not something that you should contact me or the seller about. Again, it’s just the day that item decided to break. With all that said, it has been a real pleasure working with you. Do you have any questions about what I just said?”

Now the key to this “speech” was her presentation. She said it with a smile and a twinkle in her eye, yet she was looking right at the buyers and made her point very clear. She did NOT say it threateningly or sarcastically, just matter-of-factly.

Man, I bet this simple 30 second speech has saved her many headaches! It’s a very pro-active approach to a common problem. Now instead of fighting over details from her last transaction, she is free to work on getting to the next closing. Very smart!